Edinburgh Companion to Alasdair Gray and the Arts

Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon is Professor of British Literature at Aix-Marseille Université (AMU). Her research focuses on 20th- and 21st-century Scottish fiction. She is the author of The Space of Fiction: Voices from Scotland in a Post-devolution Age (2015), Alasdair Gray: Marges et Effets de Miroirs (2004) and has contributed a chapter to Alasdair Gray: Ink for Worlds, ed. Camille Manfredi (2014). She is also the editor of Women and Scotland: Literature, Culture, Politics (2020) and, with Camille Manfredi and Scott Hames, of Scottish Writing after the Devolution: Edges of the New (2022). Camille Manfredi is Professor of Scottish literature at the University of Western Brittany. She is the author of Alasdair Gray: le faiseur d’Ecosse (2012) and Nature and Space in Contemporary Scottish Writing and Art (2019), editor of Alasdair Gray: Ink for Worlds (2014), and co-editor, with Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon and Scott Hames, of Scottish Writing After Devolution: Edges of the New (2022). Kirsten Stirling is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Lausanne. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Scottish literature and early modern poetry. She is the author of Bella Caledonia: Woman, Nation, Text (2008), Peter Pan’s Shadows in the Literary Imagination (2012) and Picturing Divinity in John Donne’s Writings (2024) as well as several edited collections.

This collection of essays pays full tribute to Alasdair Gray as one of Scotland’s most important creative forces. Bringing together sharp critical analyses of his writing, thoughtful interpretations of his visual works, new readings of his politics, and the voices of those who worked with him, it maps the interactions of text, images and ideas that characterised a career of inimitable productivity. By structuring the volume around his engagement with politics and community, his collaborations, and adaptions of his work, the editors highlight the importance of Gray’s literary and political interventions, his intellectual generosity, and the nature of his influence on the arts in Scotland and beyond. These ‘likely and unlikely’ stories are underpinned by substantial archival research and brilliantly supported by illustrations illuminating both his life and his importance as a visual artist. The collection offers new perspectives on Gray’s biography, his working practices, and his impact not only on other writers and artists but on a country shaping a sense of itself. In the process the book remains faithful to the unique combination of lively mischief and intellectual commitment that made Alasdair Gray an imaginative iconoclast of international importance.

• List of illustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: On What Led to Alasdair Gray and the ArtsMarie-Odile Pittin-Hedon, Camille Manfredi and Kirsten StirlingPart I: Alasdair Gray, Politics and Community1. Man of Independent Mind: Alasdair Gray and the Scottish Constitutional QuestionEilidh Whiteford2. ‘The matter of Scotland’: Alasdair Gray and Hugh MacDiarmidScott Lyall3. ‘One Great Soul or Mind or Force’: Alasdair Gray and EmpireJoseph H. Jackson4. Alasdair Gray as a Public IntellectualCarla Sassi5. The Coherent Panopticon: Seeing Things from Every Side and Firmly Drawing a LineAlan Riach6. ‘Mirrors reflecting mirrors’: Gray Writing Women, Writing MenKirsten Stirling7. Alasdair Gray’s Disability ImaginationArianna Introna8. Taoism and Sociopolitical Allegories in Alasdair Gray’s Short StoriesNing He and Hongling LyuPart II: Alasdair Gray in Collaboration9. The Working Practices of Alasdair GrayNichol Wheatley10. Alasdair Gray and the Art of the Creative Response: From ‘The Star’ to ‘The Crystal Egg’ and Back, Across Visual and Literary PracticeRodge Glass11. ‘their talk of poetry / how I should write my own’: Alasdair Gray’s Englishing of DanteDaragh O’Connell12. How Lanark EndsJohn Purser13. Alasdair Gray and the Art of PrefacesCamille Manfredi and Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon14. Word-Image Relationships: Alasdair Gray’s Shades of White, Iconotextuality and BeyondAnthony Remy15. ‘My instinctive decisions are also conscious ones’: The Typography and Lettering of Alasdair Gray, from Micro to MonumentalEdwin PickstonePart III: Mediating and Adapting Alasdair Gray 16. The Exhibitions of Alasdair GrayJenny Brownrigg17. Fictio and Facta: Alasdair Gray’s Spatial PerformativityFederica Giardino18. From Print to Pixel: Poor Things: A Novel Guide and the Digital Reinterpretation of Alasdair Gray’s Novel FormsRachel Loughran19. Adapting Poor Things for the ScreenDuncan Petrie20. Building a Legacy through The Alasdair Gray ArchiveSorcha Dallas21. Adapting Lanark for the stageDavid GreigNotes on ContributorsIndex